The Urbana City Council held its biweekly meeting on Monday to discuss several ordinances and resolutions. The meeting began with an introduction of the new city website, followed by public and committee input.
The City of Urbana will launch its new website two weeks from now. The new site is designed to be more accessible and easier to navigate and maintain, according to Thomas Webb, the city’s IT manager.
The website’s domain name will be switched from urbanaillinois.us to urbanail.gov. The new site is more compact, and all quick links are based on current site analytics.
The soft launch is scheduled for the week of Dec. 9, when urbanail.gov will go live with the new site. On the official launch day, Dec. 13, urbanaillinois.us will redirect to urbanail.gov, and the old site will become unavailable. After the launch, the city will request feedback via the website and social media.
Discussion of the first ordinance concerned an amendment of the Urbana Zoning Ordinance to remove additional lot area and width requirements for certain uses. This ordinance failed to pass.
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The resolution, which was discussed after, would approve and authorize the execution of an intergovernmental agreement for the design and construction of improvements to Wright Street between Champaign and Urbana. This resolution was sent to the consent agenda and will be voted on in the next council meeting.
The second resolution would endorse the Champaign-Urbana Long-Range Transportation Plan. This resolution was also sent to the consent agenda.
The third resolution would approve and authorize the execution of an Urbana HOME consortium subrecipient agreement regarding using HOME funds on behalf of the City of Champaign. The fourth resolution would approve and authorize a rental housing developer agreement for Urbana HOME. Both resolutions were sent to the consent agenda.
The following ordinance would amend the Urbana City Code, particularly on sections about food licenses and recycling tax. This ordinance would establish the fees for food licenses and the new recycling tax, which would also implement the 10-cent single-use bag tax. This ordinance was passed.
Another ordinance, which would revise the annual budget ordinance, would primarily reallocate funds and request additional funds from the City Council. This ordinance was also passed.
The next resolution discussed would approve an increase in liquor licenses for Centra Gas Inc. The final resolution discussed would approve the same for H-Mart Urbana. Both resolutions were sent to the consent agenda for further review and voting next week.
The meeting concluded with council input.
